In a new report issued on December 14, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) predicts that China's crude steel production in 2011 will reach 674 million mt, up by seven percent as compared to the 630 million mt now anticipated for the whole of 2010. Last year, ABARE had estimated that China's crude steel production would total 617 million mt in 2010.
According to the recent data provided by China's National Bureau of Statistics, in the first 11 months of the current year China's crude steel production increased by 10.1 percent year on year to 577.3 million mt.
In addition, ABARE has predicted in its new report that China's iron ore import volume will total 629 million mt in 2011, up 3.5 percent compared to the estimated 608 million mt for 2010, while the country's import volume of metallurgical coal in 2011 is expected to reach 45 million mt, indicating a slight increase compared to the anticipated 44 million mt for 2010.
According to Chinese customs, in the first 11 months of the current year China imported a total of 560 million mt of iron ore, down 0.9 percent compared to the corresponding period of 2009, with an average price of $126.4/mt, up almost 60 percent year on year.